Developer: Undergroundies
Publisher: Undergroundies
Platform: Steam
Tested on: PC
Uagi-Saba – Preview
Always wanted to breed mystics and create your own underground city? In Uagi-Saba, you can do just that. With their first game, Undergroundies tried to make something that didn’t need to feed off other games to be a good game. This creature care simulator takes place deep into the layers of the planet. You’ll have to breed, hatch, raise and feed these magical creatures known as Mystics while also harvesting for resources, expanding your sanctuary and exploring the unknown depths of the inner earth. Every room is used for many different reasons, and it is your goal to find them.
Long ago an ancient race known for their skills in genetics and bio engineering traveled across the stars in a ship built solely for one purpose, to transport a small creature to its new home. With the last of their resources, they managed to send a small creature for a final mission. This mission was their last chance of surviving the extinction of their race.
It is your job to gather everything and attract mystics to aid you in your quest. The further down you go, the more relics and artifact you’ll discover about the world. Almost every new room you charge, you get a chance to read lore books. In these you’ll learn more and more about the original planet and their habits.
The graphics aren’t very demanding for your GPU and are quite nice to watch. The art is reminiscent of comic books. The creator seems to go for a hand drawn feel to it and succeeds in this.. Some items may look like each other but those are just in the background.
The mystics are all unique in a way that the uses are different. A mystic meant for lore keeping will have scrolls on his back while the digger will need more digging items. Every machine has its own look as well and the movements of them working are very fluid.
The music starts with being mysterious, but after a while it becomes some kind of funky jungle beat with drums and snare instruments. This doesn’t change much throughout the game to give you the feeling that you are in an exotic place. The snare instruments get replaced with xylophone sounds. This music doesn’t aid you with warning signs or more upbeat tempo when you’re almost to a resource. Neither does it gives you warnings when your mystic is about to die.
With each click on the different objects, there is a small sound depending on the object you clicked.
When playing with headphones, you get really immersed in the game. When starting the game, the music takes the front seat, but after a while it complements the game and its mechanics and blends in with the experience.
Undergroundies released their full-fledged game and in a first notice, you might think it is some rip-off from fallout shelter. It is true that you may recognize some elements, but Uagi-Saba takes it to the next level. This is more of a life simulator disguised as a fun game. You start with one room and the ability to charge/unlock the adjacent rooms. You can’t unlock rooms above or beneath without a tunnel. You’ll need your resources to build tunnels.
There are only a couple of buttons you’ll need to use. You get the WASD/QZSD keys for moving around the map, the left mouse button for clicking on objects and the scrolling wheel to zoom in or out in the game. When you zoom out to the max, you’ll see a mini-map with the symbols of what each symbol means. Be careful though with this scrolling cause it’s sensitive to the touch. It can be played with the touchpad, but mouse is preferred for the scrolling part.
To keep your population happy, you’ll need to build some furnaces, these will keep your mystics warm and cozy. Besides heat, your mystics also need food and water. It is your duty to fulfill those needs. By collecting fungus, you can create e-cakes for feeding. For water, you’ll have to do a little creating and building. By unlocking rooms, you may encounter wells filled with water. By building a water pump, you can collect and store water to give to your mystics.
As we mentioned before, you’ll need food to survive. This doesn’t grow on trees or something, because they’re mushrooms, so you’ll need a mushroom garden. You can build this in any node you want, if it has a building module on the floor. The modules on the floor are for stone ovens, fermentation modules and mushroom gardens. Later, you’ll be able to build the water pump and various other modules which you as the builder, must find out.
On the roof of every node, there are also modules that you can build. These are of course of different use than the floor modules. There are three modules that you can build from the start of the game.
The essence extractor generates essence which you can use for making e cakes. They generate this product out of thin air and will keep generating this on a regular base. The more generators you build, the more essence you’ll get over time.
The second node you can build is the energy extractor. They draw essence from thin air but convert this to energy. This is your main resource that you’ll need for almost everything. It’s a good idea to stock up on a lot of this in the beginning to get further faster. Like the essence extractors, these also generate energy on a regular base. And once again, the more generators you have, the faster your energy will refill over time.
The final node that you can build is a lantern. This doesn’t generate anything but light. It makes your inhabitants feel at home in their new house. When you build their houses, which are called dens, you’ll need to put a lantern above it, so it looks cozy. The inhabitants will just show up in their dens and you’ll get to choose what their role in your society will be. The options are lore keepers, which will gather lore for you, or the engineer. The engineer will go to the dig site and get you artifacts that you can study in the study room.
Once you get the hang of it, it’ll get more fun to play, but it does lack some kind of guidance. The tutorial is only said once for every new quest/action and you can’t access this info elsewhere in the game. By looking through the menu and options of buildings, you’ll have to figure out what to do after forgetting the mentioned task. The good thing is that you can always progress by using the energy to create new rooms. If you’re stuck, just expand your underground city.
Conclusion
Uagi-Saba is a casual indie game that certainly has its pros and cons. While the game is still in Early Access, there is still a chance for it to grow and become something memorable. How you play the game is entirely up to you, as you can play the game in an active fashion, or let it run in the background to generate essence. The biggest problem with the game is that there’s a lack of guidance and clarity, making it hard to fully appreciate the game in its current state. If you take note of the objectives however, and you get the hang of things, a new world will open up to you, and it will make the game that much more enjoyable. This is clearly a game that’s not for everyone, but with the right mindset and preferences, this one can be charming nonetheless.
By ThatOtherGuy
Uagi-Saba - Preview,
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